Even though most authors can cite portions of works without payment, …

Share this story

If you've been reading Ars for long, you know that we take the Fair Use provisions of US Copyright law very seriously, and as a result we have decried the slow but consistent erosion of Fair Use at the behest of the entertainment industry. As you may have already figured out, we have our own copyright here at Ars, and some of us also have other works copyrighted, to boot. Nevertheless, we've found the trends as of late to be disturbing, and today more exemplary news made its way across my desk.

As you may know, in most contexts, it is perfectly legal to cite and/or quote another copyrighted work without financial consideration. (Of course, if you quote a preponderance of a work, that's another story entirely, but this rarely happens.) Such minor citations happen both on Ars and in the academic work undertaken by a few of us in "Real Life," but then, we rarely play with quotations of commercial entertainment works. And apparently, that's a good thing. To wit:

I have here on my desk a photocopy of a "licence agreement" between my agent and one David C. Olsen, Director/Business Affairs, Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, Florida. This document grants me "the non-exclusive right to print, publish, distribute and sell at [my] sole cost and expense" the lyrics from an attached schedule of "copyrighted musical composition(s)." Namely: the songs "The Bends," "Idioteque," and "I Might Be Wrong," all by Radiohead. The cost of securing these rights was "the sum of THREE HUNDRED FIFTY ($350.00) dollars, payable in US funds," plus "one (1) gratis copy of any publication in which the composition is utilized."

And that's where the story begins. The above quote is from the author of Planet Simpson, a book dedicated to (you guessed it) the world of the Simpsons. Copyfight noticed the complaint of the author and relayed it, but the story gets more ridiculous. Author Chris Thomson continues:

I was not required to fork over a single dime to quote from The Simpsons itself, nor to quote at length from Tony Hendra's excellent book Going Too Far, nor to quote from Foucault or Mark Twain or David Foster Wallace. But to use 87 words from the collected lyrics of Radiohead? Three hundred and fifty simoleons. Roughly $4.02 per word. (Which, incidentally, is more than double the highest amount I've ever been paid per word to write for a magazine or newspaper.)

The mind blowing aspect of this is, of course, the music industry's hubris. Why is it that I can quote hundreds and hundreds of words from academic authors who have the same copyright protections as the music industry, and yet I have to pay nothing? Why does a few dozen words of lyrics require payment?

Adding insult to injury, wouldn't you know it that Thom Yorke, the lead singer for Radiohead, publicly performed words and references to Chris Thomson's own work on environmental issues in their concerts, and didn't pay a dime. I find it hard to believe that Radiohead would approve of such inane practices by their management, and I would think that they should comment on this ridiculous treatment of Fair Use. If we're heading into a world where even citations of minor portions of copyrighted material necessitates financial consideration, then we're headed for intellectual disaster.

Share this story

Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher